>R 6005 
.fl48 E8 
1920 
Copy 1 



EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND 

4 play hy 
.GILBERT CANNAN 



PUBLISHED BY B. W. HUEBSCH 

NEW YORK 




EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
NOVELS 

Peter Homunculus 

Little Brother 

Round the Corner 

Young Earnest 

Old Mole 

Three Pretty Men 

Mendel 

The Stucco House 

Mummery 

Pink Roses 



Windmills 

Samuel Butler: A Critical Study 

Satire 

The Joy of the Theatre 

Four Plays 

Freedom 

TRANSLATION 

Jean Christophe. By Remain Rolland 



BY GILBERT CANNAN 

Everybody's 
Husband 




NEW YORK : B. W. HUEBSCH 



COPYRIGHT, 1920 
BY B. W. HUEBSCH 



Ma' 



o^i 



©CU571316 






TO 

JOHN DRINKWATER 

IN RETURN FOR MUCH 



PREFACE 

Like Bernard Shaw I find that when I venture 
to talk of my plays I am confronted with the in- 
credulous question, 'Tlays? What Plays?" as 
though a writer with a reputation as a novelist 
and critic had no business even to think of the 
theatre. The secret of it is that I think of very 
little else and even when my discourse is of poli- 
tics or women or marriage or prohibition or any 
of the other topics that so plentifully obscure 
life and thought, I am thinking and working in 
terms of the theatre. A subtle critic would have 
discovered that in my books long ago but critics 
have rarely time to be subtle nowadays. 

There seems to be a law in life that if a man 
cares really deeply about anything he must go 
into the wilderness to find it, and accordingly I 
have had to obey that law in my search for the 
drama. I arrived in London in 1905 with the 
habit of writing plays full on me and men like 
Galsworthy, Barker, Hankin and Shaw discov- 
ered promise in my juvenilia — of which for- 
tunately not a word remains. Certain small 

[7] 



works were produced in different theatres but I 
had the sense to realise that plays are only writ- 
ten by men in their maturity. The discovery of 
J. M. Synge settled the matter for me. Here 
was the one real dramatist of modern times. One 
whom there is only Tchekov to equal and he had 
lounged through life until he was mature enough 
to express himself in the form native to him. 
That I think is how dramatists are made. They 
spend their youth like Br'er Terrapin in "loungin' 
round and sufferin'." So for ten years and more 
I have ''lounged and suffered" through pretty well 
the whole field of literature, producing novels, 
poems, essays, satires, but all the time absorbing 
material for the work I hoped to do when the 
season of maturity should come. Not being a 
super-man the habit of writing plays remained 
with me as a secret vice, but I don't think plays 
can be written without contact with the theatre 
and I was exiled from the theatre. 

After a serious illness in 1916 my Doctor en- 
tered into discussion as to the proper place for 
my convalescence. I declared for Birmingham, 
and his jaw dropped as he had never considered 
Birmingham as a health resort. I explained that 
Birmingham contained the only healthy theatre 
in England and that the theatre is the one place 
to go to for one's health. I don't think he under- 

[8] 



stood me, but, having attended me for some 
months he had discovered that I am so consti- 
tuted that I do things my own way or not at all 
and he humoured my whim, as he must have 
thought it. I wrote to John Drinkwater who, 
thinking I had taken leave of my senses, came 
rushing up to London, saw me, humoured me, 
consented — solemnly, for John like so many of 
my friends, has the mistaken notion that I am 
a tragic character. Hence much confusion. I 
am much more serious than that. 

I arrived in Birmingham, my chosen health 
resort, to find everybody forewarned to sympa- 
thise with the tragedy of my broken health, 
whereas in fact, I had never been so well in my 
life, also honest John in the throes of composi- 
tion. He had written a war-play about Greeks 
and Trojans and the ladies of the company were 
complaining that there were no parts for them 
in it. To soothe them I promised to produce a 
play in which there should be only women and 
in a day or two I was ready with that small 
fantasy: Everybody's Husband (Birmingham 
thought the title shocking!). 

Drinkwater's play Z = and my own were 
produced on the same night: I had left a good 
deal behind me in London, including my dress 
clothes, and John insisted that if my play was a 

[9] 



success I must take a call. I pointed out the im- 
possibility of my doing any such thing since it is 
well known that dramatic authors live and work 
and sleep in their dress clothes. He insisted 
even to the point of offering me the use of his 
after he had done with them, and that appealed 
to my sense of humour. John's play was a suc- 
cess and the mood of success settled over the 
evening so that I knew I was safe in pelting into 
his clothes. My play was a success, people said 
''Bravo" and I appeared like a real dramatic 
author with an expanse of white shirt front 
(John Drinkwater's) . So that now when people 
ask me incredulously, "What Plays?" I can point 
to Everybodi/s Husband and say that I am the 
only man alive who has worn the dress-clothes of 
the author of Abraham Lincoln. That is fame, 
and the anecdote is to be taken seriously. 

So indeed is the play, because it opens up a 
vein which I hope to work for all it is worth. 
Most of the trouble in the theatre at present is 
due to its being taken so solemnly — a very dif- 
ferent matter from its being taken seriously. 
Ibsen for instance has been made impossible in 
the Anglo-Saxon theatre and the failure of the 
Barker-Shaw-Galsworthy revival to establish 
any real hold on the people of England and 
America is due to their well-meaning disciples 

[10] 



who took them so solemnly that while applauding 
their generalities they forgot to laugh at their 
defects. In the theatre there should always be 
a sub-current of laughter. (It is always there in 
Shakespeare's tragedy) and if this is forgot- 
ten the drama is left stagnant. If it be remem- 
bered there is some hope of achievement. That 
at present is as much as we can look for and 1, 
for one, hope to produce plays that shall be as 
blithe dramatically as Mozart's operas are musi- 
cally. If I don't do it someone else will — but I 
should like to do it myself. 

This play then is important to me, both in 
itself and because it played a great part in my 
convalescence of three years ago, just as I hope 
its successor may play some part in the present 
convalescence of humanity. 

Gilbert Cannan 
New York, November, 1919 



[11] 



This Play was first produced at the Birmingham 
Repetory Theatre on Saturday, lUh April 1917, under 
the direction of the Author with the following cast: 

A Girl, Cecily Byrne 

Her Mother, Mary Raby 

Her Grandmother, Cathleen Oxford 

Her Great-Grandmother, Margaret Chatwin 
A Maid, Helena Pickard 
A Domino, Felix Aylmer 



12] 



EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND 

The scene is a girVs bed-chamber, with a door to 
the right and a wide-open window to the left 
A charming bed is to the right in an alcove. 

A sofa is to the right of the stage, and three 
chairs are arranged to the left. The moon- 
light streams in through the window and 
the nightingale is heard singing. 

The Girl enters. She is clad in a bridal gown. 
She stands looking out through the window 
and sighs, opens her arms and blows kisses 
to the moon. 

Girl 
Delicious, delicious dream! Good-bye! Good- 
bye! 

[The nightingale sings.] The last song of my 
dream. 

[The Maid enters from the door and stands 
waiting. 

Girl 
I have been asleep in the garden, dreaming; 
yet it was no longer my garden, but a place high 

[13] 



above the sea, with terraced groves of oranges 
' and lemons; and in the darkness fireflies danced 
above the water. [She looks round the room.] 
Am I still dreaming? 

Maid 

Yes, miss. 

Girl 
This is my room? Yet it is not the same. . . . 
Are you my maid, Lisette? 

Maid 
Yes, miss. 

Girl 
I am to be married to-morrow. 

Maid 
Yes, miss. Shall I put away your wedding 
dress? It would be a pity to spoil it. 

Girl 
Please, Lisette. 

[The Maid helps the Girl to disrobe, and 
the Girl then sits on the bed. 

Girl 
When I say ''You can go," I wonder, do you 
always want to go? 
[14] 



Maid 
Not always, miss. There are times when I 
should like to talk. 

Girl 
And to say what you think of me? You may. 

Maid 
I am sorry you are going to be married. 

Girl 

Are you? Why should you be sorry? 

Maid 
Because it is a shame that you should have to 
be for ever what one man thinks you are. 

Girl 
Did you say that or did I think it? 

Maid 

You thought it, and like a good servant I re- 
peated it. 

Girl 
I think I shall run away. It would be lovely 
to run away into my dreams, where I should 

[15] 



always be young, always happy, always be- 
loved — as I was just now in the garden. [Silence. 
The nightingale sings.] Eternity was in my 
dream, eternity in one moment, and I felt sure 
then that to-morrow would never come. 

Maid 
Will you require anything else, miss? 

[Silence. 

Maid 
Will you require anything else, miss? 

Girl 
No tea in the morning because to-morrow will 
never come. 

Maid 
If you do not wish it, of course, miss. 

[The Maid goes out. The moon shines more 
brightly through the window and the 
nightingale sings more loudly. 

Girl 

What did he say? Oh I cannot remember! I 
cannot remember ! [She begins to cry as though 
her heart were breaking.] To-morrow shall not 
come! To-morrow shall not come! I hate to- 

[16] 



morrow! To-morrow brings age and the spell 
that creeps over women and breaks their dreams. 
I will keep my dream. I will keep my dream. 
[She rises from the bed and creeps over to 
the window, and stands for a moment 
looking wistfully out. Music sounds. 
She is drawn out as by a spell and pres- 
ently dances in in a carnival costume with 
a man dressed in a domino. They kiss 
and stand entranced with each other. 
There is a loud knock at the door. 
The domino disappears and presently flings 
a red rose in through the window. The 
Girl picks this up and places it in her 
bosom. 
The knocking at the door grows louder. 

Girl 
Who is there? But I know who is there. I 
know everything. 

[The door swings open and the Girl's 
Mother appears dressed in the fashion of 
1890. A golden light floods the centre of 
the room. 

Mother 
I heard you crying. I have been waiting for 
years to hear you crying. 

[17] 



Girl 
Was I? I had forgotten. I am glad you came, 
for I have been waitmg to talk to you. You 
think I am going to be married to-morrow, but 
I am not. 

Mother 
Not married? But girls must get married. 
[The Girl lies on the sofa, with her hand to 
the rose in her bosom. 

Girl 
Why must they? 

Mother 
Men must be looked after. 

Girl 
They get on very well before they are married, 
don't they? I don't want to spend my life look- 
ing after a man. Were you happy with your 
husband, mother? 

Mother 

He thought I was. Oh yes. I enjoyed pre- 
tending to be happy to please him. It was like 
having two lives, one to keep him satisfied and 

r 18 1 



content, and another all alone that nobody knew 
anything about. 

Girl 
[Impulsively.] Oh! you poor little mother! 

Mother 
I'll trouble you not to pity me. I enjoyed it. 
Why were you crying just now? 

Girl 
Why was I crying? Because I don't want to 
have two lives. I want one life, simple and clean 
and glorious. Why did you have to please your 
husband? 

Mother 
He would not have paid the bills if I did not. 

Girl 
Did you dress like that to please him? 

Mother 
Oh no. It was the fashion. I had to be in the 
fashion or he would have been ashamed of me. 

Girl 
Did you cry before you were married? 

[19] 



Mother 
Oh no. I knew very little about it. I re- 
member I slept particularly well, and I could not 
understand why my mother was so anxious for 
me. 

Girl 
You were always a darling fool, mother. 

Mother 
Was I? I never had any brains. Cotton- wool 
your father used to say I had. 

Girl 
I know perfectly well why you are anxious for 
me. Because you know I am quite likely to run 
away at the church door. 

Mother 
My darling, you must not say such things. 

Girl 

Oh! but I must. I can say everything now, 
everything, because of my dream. It was a 
dream within a dream, like a Chinese box, and 
in the very tiniest and most beautiful of all was 
a shining grain of truth. That is why I see 

[20] 



you as you are, a dear silly in a bustle and ham 
sleeves — a married woman. Married ! Married ! 
Never will I look so completely married; for if 
I am unhappy my man shall know it, and if I 
am lonely he shall know it. He shall know the 
worst and the best of me, and I will never wither 
away into a housewife for his appetites and a 
nurse to his children. There! That's revolt. 
That's rebellion. Now you know why I was cry- 
ing, out of happiness because I have rebelled. 
[The Domino comes dancing in through the 
window. The Girl flies into his arms and 
they dance away into the moonlight. 



Mother 

[Weeping.] Come back! Oh! come back, my 
darling. You can keep your dream. You can 
keep it always and creep away into it when life 
becomes too empty — as I have done. Oh! come 
back. I have always dreaded that clever brain 
of yours. I have dreaded it, hated it, hated it. 
For girls must be married; they must accept 
what their husbands give them and be grateful 
though it be never so little. That is one of the 
things that never, never change. [She goes to 
the window. The nightingale sings and music 
comes up from a distance.] She is gone. They 

[21] 



have stolen her heart away; and she will never 

believe that I can understand. 

[From the garden enters the Grandmother: 
a hard-featured lady of the 1860 period 
with smooth, braided hair, pork-pie hat 
and crinoline. She carries a Bible. 

Grandmother 
Still at your moon-gazing! You should go to 
church three times on a Sunday. I always said 
that husband of yours had no religion and would 
come to no good. 

Mother 
They have stolen her heart away. 

Grandmother 
Fiddlesticks ends ! That comes of your poetry 
and your theatre-going. In my day young girls 
were never allowed to go to the theatre. 

Mother 
Yes, mamma. [They move into the room and 
sit. 

Grandmother 
The old ways are best. Stick to them. Marry 
[22] 



your girls quickly and get them settled. There 
is no shilly-shallying in the Bible. 

Mother 
No, mamma. But the world has not been the 
same since bicycles came in. 

Grandmother 
Bi-cyclesi Bi-cycles! [She opens her Bible. 

Mother 
There are no bicycles in the Bible, mamma. 

Grandmother 
I should think not, indeed. No nice woman 
would propel herself on wheels with the use of 
her own 

Mother 
Legs, manoma? 

Grandmother 
Hold your tongue, girl. 

Mother 
I am a married woman, mamma. 

Grandmother 
Humph! [She looks round the room disap- 
provingly.] Whose room is this? 

[23] 



Mother 
My daughter's. It's her own taste! 

Grandmother 
Taste? Taste? You bring up your daughter 
to have taste? Please close the window. I feel 
a draught. 

Mother 
But we sleep with the windows open nowadays. 

Grandmother 
Most dangerous. [Silence. 

Mother 
Mamma, were you happy with your husband? 

Grandmother 
Will you please close the window and draw 
the blind. I consider your costume most friv- 
olous, almost French. 

Mother 
We never did get on, mamma, did we? Were 
you happy with your husband? 
[24] 



Grandmother 
He thought I was. . . . Why don't you close 
that window? 

[The Mother goes to the window and 
closes one side of it. 

Mother 
No. I cannot. 

Grandmother 
[With great satisfaction.] Then I shall be 
laid up for weeks. 

Mother 
If I close the window I shall shut out my poor 
girl's happiness for ever. She has gone out into 
her dreams into the inmost dream of all to win 
the brightness of it for her joy. [Lamely.] I 
think that was what she said. 

Grandmother 
You're a fool. 

Mother 
A soft, bewildered fool. You forbade me to 
have my dream. I let my girl have her way, 
but she never thought that I could imderstand 
her. Did you never dream? 

[25] 



Grandmother 
I was a lonely girl. . . . Once by a lake in the 
star-light, with the water sucking at the pebbles 
on the shore, I saw the fin-backed line of the 
hills and the starry sky beyond through the eyes 
of a man's imagination, and after that I could 
have no other dreams. He left me there on the 
shore, and he walked slowly away, and the stones 
came rolling down the hill-side into the water. 
... I was very young then, and soon after that 
I was married. 

Mother 
You should have told me that when I was 
young. I could have understood you. I could 
have loved you. 

Grandmother 
You need not close the window. 

Mother 
Are not all women sisters? 

Grandmother 
Except where men are concerned; and what 
else is there? 
[26] 



Mother 
[Coming down.] Oh, mamma, I wish you had 
told me before. 

Grandmother 
[Tartly.] How could I? I could not give 
your father away. 

Mother 
What were you to your mother? 

Grandmother 
I never knew her. She ran away from my 
father when I was a child. 

Mother 
Oh! 7 ran away once — for three hours. I had 
two children then. I put them into the peram- 
bulator, marched them off to the station and 
went up to London — and came back by the next 
train. 

Grandmother 
Nice goings on, indeed! And what did he say 
to that? 

Mother 
It was one of the things I never told him. I 

[27] 



always found it very hard to tell him the truth. 
It seemed to hurt him when I did. 

Grandmother 
They don't expect it of us. 

Mother 
I wish you had told me what men do expect. 

Grandmother 
Heaven knows ! I am sure they don't. 

Mother 
[Wistfully.] I should like to tell my girl. 

Grandmother 
She must read her Bible and pray for guidance 
like the rest of us. Who is she, pray, to escape 
the common destiny? Let her go like the rest of 
us to her husband, find out his weakness and keep 
it to herself. ... I think it is quite time she 
came in. 

[The Girl comes running in. 

Girl 

Mother! Mother! 
[28] 



Mother 
My darling. You are safe ! Now do go to bed 
and let me tuck you up for the last time. 

Girl 
No. No. No. No. If I went to bed my bed 
would turn into a barge with silken sails like 
Cleopatra's, and I should go floating down the 
burnished river 

Grandmother 
Don't talk nonsense, child. Do as your mother 
tells youl 

Girl 
Silly old woman you are in your crinoline. I 
don't wonder you have forgotten that you have 
legs, walking about with a five-barred fence all 
round you. 

Grandmother 
Manners! Manners! Is this the effect of bi- 
cycles? 

Gibl 

And motor cycles, and cars, and aeroplanes. 
Certainly I have legs. Look at them ! To walk 
with and dance with and run away with. 

[She takes a flying leap into the bed. 

[29] 



Grandmother 
I am more shocked than I can say. 

Girl 
Pooh I Shocked! Nobody is shocked nowa- 
days, and nobody is shocking. It is just as it 
was in my great-grandmother's days. She told 
me all about it. She ran away too. She is out 
there in the garden. I think you ought to have 
told me. When you have a jolly good story 
like that in the family, why be ashamed of it? 

Grandmother 
Did you go to school, child? 

Girl 
I did. I went to five schools and had to leave 
every one of them. 

Grandmother 
Did they not teach you to speak English? 
Jolly is not an adverb ! 

Girl 

They taught me French, history, geography, 
mathematics, calisthenics and deportment, cook- 
ery and domestic science, botany and English 
literature. 

[30] 



Grandmother 
I am deeply pained by the frivolity of your 
manner. I disapprove. 

[The Great-Grandmother appears at the 
window. She is charmingly dressed in the 
fashion of 1830. 

Great-Grandmother 
Stuff and nonsense! The girl is charming. 
[All turn to her.] May I come in? I am the 
black sheep of the family. 

Grandmother 
I was taught to pray for you. 

Great-Grandmother 
Oh ! I am long past that. 

[She comes down to the empty chair at the 
front. 

Girl 
I think you are lovely. I tried to tell them 
about you just now, but they would not listen. 

Great-Grandmother 
Virtue! Virtue! Thy name is cruelty! 

[31] 



Girl 
Tell me, were you happy with your husband! 

Great-Grandmother 
Which? I had four. They all thought I was 
happy until I bolted. Can you read me this 
riddle? I was married four times but I had 
only one husband! 

[The Grandmother bursts into tears. 

Mother 
[To the Girl.] I don't think you should 
stay, darling. 

Great-Grandmother 
Pooh! Isn't she to be married to-morrow? 

Girl 
It is my own room. 

Great-Grandmother 
And most pretty too. . . . [She looks quizzi- 
cally at the Mother and the Grandmother.] 
What quaint clothes you are wearing. 

Grandmother 
They are at any rate modest. 
[32 1 



Girl 
[To Great-Grandmother.] I do want to 
hear about your husbands. 

Great-Grandmother 
Lovers, my dear. Did you never hear of the 
great Lord Byron? 

Girl 
"There was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then 
Her beauty and her chivalry. ..." 

Great-Grandmother 
He did better than that. Did you never read 
Don Juan? 

Mother, Grandmother 
Don Juan! 

Great-Grandmother [declaims] 
"They were alone, but not alone as they 
Who shut in chambers think it loneliness; 
The silent "bcean, and the starlight bay. 

The twilight glow which momently grew less. 

The voiceless sands and dropping caves that lay 

Around them, made them to each other press, 

[33] 



As if there were no life beneath the sky 

Save theirs, and that their life could never die." 

Girl 
How glorious! 

Grandmother 
How profane! 

Great-Grandmother 
I was forbidden to read Lord Byron, so of 
course I devoured him. 

Girl 
[Excited.] Did you? Were you? 

Great-Grandmother 
Alas! He was dead at Missolonghi in the 
Greek wars before I travelled up to London for 
my first season. 

Girl 
Were you very young when you married? 

Great-Grandmother 
I was eighteen. ... I was trwenty-two when I 
[34] 



ran away. I was twenty-nine when I made my 
great discovery and compounded my riddle. 

Girl 
I have run away too. ... I have run away 
into my dreams. I am never coming back until 
I have guessed your riddle. 

Mother 
My darling, my darling, think of to-morrow. 

Girl 
It is because I am thinking of to-morrow that 
I have run away. What does to-morrow mean 
for me? The end of everything — everything. 
He will look smug and fatuous and self-conscious 
in his frock coat and grey trousers at the church, 
and you will all weep over me. We shall drive 
away in a borrowed car and spend half a year's 
income in travelling in overheated Continental 
trains to look at tourists going the rounds, accord- 
ing to Baedeker. We shall make idiotic attempts 
to look as if we were used to each other, and I 
shall be dazed and unhappy because it is nothing 
at all like my dream, and he will never know 
that the best of me is in my dream and hidden 
away from him. I shall know that for the rest 
of my life I shall be a married woman — ^married 

[35] 



— married — ^married — with the love dying from 
my eyes and the dream in my heart crumbling 
away. 

Grandmother 
[To Mother.] If you had brought the child 
up as I bred you this could never have hap- 
pened. 

Mother 
[Weeping.] I don't understand! I don't 
understand! Her father always spoiled her. 
[The Girl goes over to her Great-Grand- 
mother. 

Girl 
You understand! Why do you understand? 

Great-Grandmother 
Perhaps because I am a wicked woman and 
have suffered. 

Girl 
Oh no. You were never wicked. You were 
never cruel. 

Great-Grandmother 
Never to young and delicate and generous 
hearts, but to hearts that were cold and dry, to 
[36] 



hearts from which all dreams had faded, I was — 
ruthless. 

Grandmother 
Shame on you ! Shame ! 

Great-Grandmother 
I was never ashamed. I was an abandoned 
woman and I enjoyed it, enjoyed even coming to 
grief, and picking up again, and again coming 
to grief. . . . Run away, pretty child, run away 
into your dream, and keep it for ever. It is bet- 
ter so. You could never fight for it as I did. 
You could never lose and smile as I did. . . . 

Girl 
Oh yes, I could. I'm sure I could. Tell me 
how, only tell me how! 

[The Domino comes to the window and 
stands silently. 

Great-Grandmother 
Dear child, we cannot learn from the suffer- 
ings of others or these two would have learned 
from mine. . . . 

Grandmother 
I refuse to hear another word. 

[37] 



Mother 
Not another word! [They sit primly upright. 
[The Girl moves across towards the bed, 
takes the rose from her bosom and kisses 
it, and stands looking from the prim pair 
to the Domino. She throws the rose to 
him. He catches it and presses it to his 
lips. 

Girl 
I shall go then into my dream, and from 
dream to dream without end. I will go with you, 
my heart, and you will understand me in every- 
thing, in joy and in pain, in the joy of suffering 
and in the pain of delight, and I shall under- 
stand you. ... In you and in me there will be 
holy things that can never be said, a joy that can 
only be sung through silence, like night sounds 
through the still moonlit air. 

[The Domino moves into the room towards 
her, she towards him. As they approach 
each other the Great-Grandmother gives 
a harsh, bitter laugh. 

Great-Grandmother 

Stop, you little fool, stop! You can't escape. 
No one can escape. In the heart of every lover 
lurks the husband, and one husband is as like 

[38] 



another as two buttons on one coat. You can't 
escape. No one can escape. That is why we 
weep at wedding feasts, we women. We can see 
the husband in the lover. Look at us now, we 
three old wives, in foolish tears because we know 
that even in your dreams 

Girl 
There is no music and no birds sing. [To the 
Domino.] If I went with you, would the fire- 
flies put out their lights, would the moon sink 
down into the sea, would the oranges and lemons 
fall from the trees, and the whispering lovers in 
the groves, would they steal away? Should I 
even in my dreams, even in you, find one who 
would wash the love from my eyes with tears 
and break the dream in my heart with longing? 

Mother 
[Half to herself.] My darling, I must save 
you! I must save you! 

Grandmother 
Don't sit muttering there! Can't you do 
something? Do at least find out if the man's in- 
tentions are honourable! 

[The Great-Grandmother walks up to the 
Domino. 

[39] 



Geeat-Grandmother 
[To Girl.] You poor child! They are too 
strong for us. They have stripped us of our 
illusions. Look ! 

[The Great-Grandmother snatches the 
Domino away and reveals a perfect type 
of Victorian husband standing with his 
legs straddled and his arms under his 
coat-tails. 

The Domino 

[Speaking mechanically.] I have already told 
you three times this week that I detest kidneys 
for breakfast. ... I distinctly mentioned this 
morning as I left the house that I did not wish 
you to return Mrs. Taylor's call. . . . How many 
more times am I to tell you that you should not 
send for the doctor unless there is some cause for 
genuine alarm? . . . There is plenty of room in 
this house. If you want to change you should 
go out more. I am sure I do not understand 
what a woman can find to do in the house all day 
long. . . . Here am I working myself to skin 
and bone and you do nothing to help me to make 
some provision for our old age. You seem to 
think I am made of money. . . . Just for this 
once I do not mind making out a cheque for half 

[40] 



the amount. ... Of course I still love you, 

my darling, but I am very busy. 

[He turns and walks out through the win- 
dow. The four women are left staring at 
each other in horror. The Great-Grand- 
mother throws up her head and laughs. 



Henry I 
George ! 



Mother 



Grandmother 



Great-Grandmother 
All of them. There is only one husband in 
the world, one eternal husband, everybody's hus- 
band. 

Girl 
[Tottering back towards her bed.] No. No. 
No. I will not. I will not. Oh! it is you, you, 
you wives who have made him like that, you who 
will pretend and pretend and be content that he 
should think you happy. No. No. No. I will 
not. I will not. 

[The stage is completely darkened for a 

moment or two. 
It is slowly lighted up again to show the 

[41] 



window closed and the curtains drawn. 

The Girl is asleep. 
The Maid enters with a tray in her hands 

which she lays by the bedside. Then 

she goes over and draws the curtains. 
The Girl is awakened and looks appre- 
hensively towards the window. 

Girl 
What time is it, Lisette? 

Maid 
Half-past seven, miss. 

Girl 
What a lovely day, Lisette ! Open the windows 
wide. [The Girl notices a bunch of red roses on 
the tray.] Letters! Oh! and roses! 

Maid 
I gathered them in the garden for you, miss! 
The dew is still on them. I wanted to be the 
first to wish you every happiness. 

Girl 
How sweet of you, Lisette! [Lisette goes out. 
[ The Girl takes up the roses and buries her 
[42] 



face in them. Then she opens one of her 
letters, smiles happily over it, and kisses 
it passionately. A thrush sings gaily out 
in the garden. 

[Curtain] 



[43 



